As a network scanner, the Kodak Scan Station 710 can actually save money compared with slower, less expensive USB-connected models. For the same price ($2,495) you could buy a handful of typical personal desktop scanners. But get the Scan Station 710 instead, and everyone in your office can enjoy the benefits of a 75-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) and a rated speed of 70 pages per minute (ppm), or 140 images per minute (ipm) for duplex (two-sided) originals. From that perspective, the Scan Station 710 might even be considered a bargain.

The Scan Station 710 is similar in many ways to the Scan Station 700 that it replaces in Kodak's line. If you look at the specifications for each, the only obvious difference is speed, with the new model claiming a significantly faster rating (by 20ppm and 40ipm). However, the actual speed increase is even more than that suggests, with shorter lag times between finishing the scan and writing the file to disk, boosting the real-world speed even more. There's isn't much difference beyond that, but the faster speed is enough to make the Scan Station 710 a more impressive scanner.

Basics and SetupThe Scan Station 710 is a bit larger than typical desktop scanners. It weighs 23 pounds, and it measures 8.1 by 14.0 by 15.0 inches (HWD) with the trays closed. Add the front output tray and the depth grows to about 24 inches. Even at full extension, the tray is little small for the largest size paper the unit can scan, at 8.5 by 34 inches.

The back of the scanner offers an Ethernet port for connecting to a network and four USB Type A ports, which you can use to connect a keyboard or a flatbed-scanner accessory. If you need a flatbed, Kodak-Alaris offers both legal-size ($495) and tabloid-size ($1,400 list) options. The maximum recommended daily volume for the scanner is 6,000 pages.

The only supplied software is the same administrative program that comes with the Kodak Scan Station 700. You can use it to create one or more configuration files, as well as upload files to any supported Kodak Scan Station model on your network. You can also create groups of scanners and upload a file to the entire group at once, and you can set scanners to automatically upload new configurations at a given time of day—the obvious choice being overnight, when the upload won't interrupt anyone in the process of scanning.

Setup can be as simple as plugging in a power cord and network cable, creating a configuration file with a single destination (which can be a shared network drive, FTP site, printer, email, SharePoint, and more), and then uploading the configuration file. In most cases, however, you'll want to define scan profiles, so people can simply choose one from the front panel without having to change settings for each scan. Each profile defines the resolution to use, whether to scan in simplex or duplex, which destination or destinations to send to, and what file formats to use (PDF, searchable PDF, Tiff, JPG, RTF, XLS, or DOC). Kodak Alaris says you can create as many profiles as you need. Only nine are displayed on the 9.7-inch touch screen at a time, but you can scroll through multiple screens.

The administrative program is easy to work through if you're knowledgeable about scanning. However, it offers little to no help for those who aren't in the know, and going through all the steps is tedious and time-consuming. Just uploading a file and having to wait for the scanner to reboot takes about 1 minute 40 seconds. When you're first setting up the scanner, creating assorted profiles, testing each, fixing mistakes, and then uploading and testing again, repeated reboots can eat up as much time as actually working with the program.

ScanningThe payoff for all the work creating the profiles is that once they're done, scanning is simple. Put a stack of pages in the ADF, pick a scan profile from the front panel, choose any options the particular profile gives you, and choose Done to scan. If you didn't create any profiles, the process is similar, but you can change any settings you like before scanning. In either case, if you need to enter text—for an email subject line for example—you can use the panel's on-screen keyboard, or a real keyboard if you connect one.

One important design oversight is that if you create profiles, you can't bypass them easily to change scan settings directly. Kodak Alaris says there is a way to switch between the Profiles screen and the default settings screen, but it requires signing on with a user name and password every time you scan, and it requires Active Directory Server on your network, which many smaller offices don't use.

PerformanceI created a scan profile for each test we normally run using scan settings of 300 pixels per inch (ppi) and black-and-white mode. Not including either the lag before the scan—between giving the scan command and the scan starting—or the lag after—between the scan finishing and the file being sent to a destination drive over the network—I timed the scanner with our standard 25-sheet, 50-page test document at 77ppm for simplex and 153ipm for duplex. With the lag included, the speed dropped to 52ppm and 102ipm. In comparison, the Kodak Scan Station 700 came out to 40ppm and 77ipm in testing using the total times.

The Scan Station 710 also performed reasonably well for scanning to searchable PDF (sPDF) format. Compared with scanning the same document to an image PDF file, it added a little less than 2 minutes for the optical character recognition (OCR) step, for a total of 2 minutes 20 seconds. That's notably better than the Kodak Scan Station 700's 4:25 total, but slower than the Epson 860 at 1:12. On the plus side, the Scan Station 710 did well on OCR, reading our Times New Roman test page at sizes as small as 8 points and our Arial test page even at 6 points without a single error.

If a USB-connected scanner is all you need, be sure to consider the Epson DS-860, which offers somewhat faster scanning to sPDF format. If you need a shared scanner for a network however, the Kodak Scan Station 710 delivers impressively good performance. It could benefit greatly from a redesigned administrative program with a more efficient workflow, but once it's set up, the Scan Station 710 is fast, reliable, and easy to use.

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M. David Stone is an award-winning freelance writer and computer industry consultant. Although a confirmed generalist, with writing credits on subjects as varied as ape language experiments, politics, quantum physics, and an overview of a top company in the gaming industry. David is also an expert in imaging technologies (including printers, monitors, large-screen displays, projectors, scanners, and digital cameras), storage (both magnetic and optical), and word processing. He is a recognized expert on printers, well known within the industry, and has been a judge for...
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